Prosper Australia

photo credit: dcmaster Barry O’Farrell was elected Premier of NSW in March this year. His first budget announced Tuesday raised a storm of protest – not over a realignment of government priorities to his conservative Coalition’s agenda, but on Stamp Duty. The previous Keneally ALP government had exempted first home buyers (on houses up to [...]

photo credit: George Laoutaris Will Greece Let EU Central Bankers Run Riot Over Sovereignty? Michael Hudson When Greece exchanged its drachma for the euro in 2000, most voters were all for joining the Eurozone. Their hope was that it would ensure stability, and that this would promote rising wages and living standards. Few saw that [...]

Arab cities lack even the basic facilities we take for granted in the West. The royals live alongside. Their giant palaces nestle in irrigated manicured gardens surrounded by high walls and efficient security.

Last Thursday, the Australian Financial Review leaked Treasury forecasts that the revenues lost in the Gillard Government’s back down on the mining tax will exceed $100 billion over the next ten years

photo credit: Travis S. The US housing market is a living hell.  Homeowners are being boiled alive. The price of land was bid up to staggering multiples of incomes, until it no longer made sense to buy a house. And then the trend turned, hard and fast. One in five US mortgages is ‘underwater’: the [...]

Melbourne City Council is selling lanes to developers, according to The Age today. It makes a pretty penny, too, having pocketed $1.2 million from the sale of part of three lanes in the last 12 months alone. The article sparked an intense debate on the newspaper’s blog.  Sales are energetically supported by citizens disgusted by [...]

  photo credit: robertivanc The great property speculation game is over in America and Europe.  The music has stopped. Forty years of steadily increasing pressure has been released.  Houses are worth a fraction of what people paid in better times, while the giant mortgages they took on remain. Meanwhile, Australia parties on.  We play the [...]

photo credit: Cayusa   Tax reform is hard for government: losers complain loud and long, while those who will benefit are suspicious and silent. We should be angry as hell about the tax system.  It scoops up the earnings of the poor but merely nips at what the wealthy make. That’s why the Victorian Treasury [...]

photo credit: nflorence2012 How to avoid being caught short: US calls in old rules to shield its markets: The slumping financial markets have been rebounding steadily in the past month for several reasons, including regulatory and legislative decisions in Washington. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed on Friday above 8000, a dramatic increase from the [...]

photo credit: mdumlao98 Prime Minister Rudd’s $10bn ‘economic security strategy’ is another blinkered response. A decade of record economic growth has done little for the aussie battler. Record prices for iron ore have cascaded into the deepest pockets in the nation, where hard working miners pay thousands of dollars in rent, soaking up much of [...]